For network flexibility, a virtual machine may move from one server to another server on the same VLAN. However, virtual machine mobility may create a challenge. If the two servers are connected to different switch devices, packets from the other switch devices cannot be forwarded to the new egress switch device directly because at the ingress switch devices, the switch device prefix for the moved virtual machine may still point to the original egress switch device. As such, there exists a need for maintaining sub-optimal forwarding to the moved virtual machine temporarily and convert it to optimal forward with graceful address migration.